


The loss of the nine

by bunghoney



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-30 00:22:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunghoney/pseuds/bunghoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder and Scully travel to the small town of Clarksdale, to investigate a series of weird disapperances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The loss of the nine

**Author's Note:**

> Started writing this over two years ago before I got obsessed with Doctor Who, found it in my computer, only to discover it was about... time travel. Kinda like it though, the character of Mulder is a lot like the Doctor, planning on more chapters soon! 
> 
> And oh, I own nothing and I'm sorry if I made any grammatical or spelling mistakes, since English isn't my native language.

07:15  
A Street  
Washington DC

It was an early tuesday morning in February. The snowfall was light for the season, but the temperature was pushing 5 degrees and adding some freezing wind to that made it a steady -5. The elm trees along the streets seemed spikey since they were covered in ice, all the vehicles parked along the roads wore white hats of fluffy snow, and the sidewalks and stairways were slippery. Grey clouds chased each other over the darkening sky. It looked like a a storm was coming. 

Concluding this, the state capital wasn't exactly showing itself from its most charming side as Dana Scully jumped in her car and muttered to herself that besides from the alien goo that she had to handle at work, the east coast weather was definitely another backside to this. Where was Arizona when you needed it? 

On top of the weather, she was running late. There had been some private phone calls in the morning that she'd had to handle, and some fuss trying to decide what to wear since she didn't have the time to do her dry cleaning last week - she had been occupied with dissecting the brain remains of an alleged 109-year old witch.

Although she was in a hurry, she knew perfectly well that she wouldn't make it to lunch without getting her daily morning coffee. She had to make a quick stop at her local coffeshop. The bell rang as she entered the café. She brushed the snow off her coat, and shook quite a big amount out of her hair. It was a classic american-italian coffeshop, with low brown plastic tables that were supposed to imitate wood. There were plastic chairs surrounding the small tables, each table bearing a cheap salt and pepper set as well as a small pile of napkins. The walls were pale orange as well as the employees' costumes and hats. Scully noticed that the girl who usually worked here, Kelly, was not present today, instead there was another young woman behind the counter, kind of tall, curly ginger hair, clear green eyes and a crystal round her neck. Scully shrugged. Although her name tag didn't read Melissa but Megan, the girl looked painfully familiar. 

Don't wanting to stay long, Scully quickly ordered an americano and searched her purse for some change. She didn't find any, realizing she'd used the last coins to tip off the pizza boy the night before. She had to use her card, but oddly enough she didn't find her private VISA, so she ended up paying for the coffee with the bureaus AmEx. The girl behind the counter asked for ID and she showed her badge.

"Oh, happy birthday... Dana" she said with a sweet smile and looked Scully in the eye. 

Scully tried to smile back, but somehow the lump in her throat prevented her from doing so. 

"Thank you", she said, wishing that she sounded polite enough. She swallowed and looked away. 

When she came out on the street she was a little shaken. She took some refreshing breaths, trying to stabilize herself. Scully wasn't used to these rushes of emotion, although they seem to have come more often lately.  
"It is, of course, nothing strange about these emotions", she reassured herself. "It is a perfectly natural reaction to what I have been going through lately. "

As she stood there, trying to pull herself together, her glance fell onto a flowershop nearby. She watched it in silence for what felt like an eternity, then she decided to go inside. 

The flower shop was small and dusky, there seemed to be almost no light at all except from the greyish blue february illumination that came in through the windows. By the walls, flowers were lined up behind glass panes, there were mostly pink and red ones - probably left since valentines day - , but also a great amount of yellow tulips. There wern't many other types of flowers to choose from and over all, the store gave a dusty and poor impression. It took her a few moments before she even spotted the the clerk who was half-hidden behind a desk that seemed too big for the very small room. 

Scully looked around for a while, then she slowly came close to the counter. 

"Um, good morning, I was wondering if I could have a couple of those?"

She gave a vauge hint to some pink carnations behind the desk. The young salesman nodded keenly and picked out some of the nicest for her and blushed slightly when he looked at her again:

"Would you like them wrapped, ehm... miss?" He seemed a bit unsure of what prefix to use. Scully gave a little inwardly smile.

"Yes, please, it's a present. Would you write me a card as well? It's for a birthday."

09:56  
FBI Headquarters  
Washington DC  
Just as in the rest of the building, or the city for that matter, it was a morning pretty much like any other morning down in the X-files basement. One little exception though - Fox Mulder wasn't sitting behind his desk with his nose stuck in some dusty casefile from 1941, no, this morning he was padding around the mentioned desk. First in a slow pace, then faster. Then slower again. He stopped, turned around, and started over again. He walked sideways, slowly, then faster. He jumped. He skipped. When he had gone over to try going counter clockwise backwards, slower, faster and very, very slow, someone spoke:

"...Mulder? Are you ok?"

All of a sudden, Scully was present in the doorway. Mulder jumped a little and turned around. Scully was leaning against the wall. She had a cocked eyebrow and a faint smile, trying hard to make it reach the eyes, but didn't really manage.

"Scully? How are you?"

Mulder didn't answer her question but threw one back instead. 

"I'm fine". Scully shook the question of her shoulders. 

"But you're very late?"

"I... overslept, and then I had to... run some errands". She looked down. "What are you doing?"

Mulder watched her. 

"Did you ever think, as a child, that you could turn back time by doing things backwards?"

Sculle smiled slightly. 

”Not exactly. As a fourteen year old, I got hold of a copy on Einsteins theories of time travelling, and by the end of that reading, I was pretty sure that the slight possibility for time travel that those theories actually do open up for, is way ahead of us. ”

Mulder took a few long strides across the room and scooped up a case file from his desk. He spoke while he opened it up:

”The past weeks, there has been several reports of murderers around a small town called Clarkdale in Arizona...”

”And now you want us to go there so you can turn back time and have them undone?”

Mulder shot her a look. 

”.. five persons, the approximate age of eighteen to thirthyfive have been reported missing. There is no given connection between the victims, they differ in sex, race and occupation. The only thing that they have sort of in common is that they're fairly young. No one is older than thirthy- something. Four of them have been found, but the fifth, Lisa Burrow, actually the first one to be gone missing, hasn't been tracked yet...”

Mulder voice rose with exitement. 

”...and Clarkedale happen to have an X-files record. In 1973, a small girl, a girl who happened to be this very Lisa Burrow, was reported to be able to turn back time. It was said that she did it by actually re-doing her every action backwards, like walking and talking. People around her experienced loss of time, they said, when she practiced this.”

”... and you've made sure she isn't something extraterrestrial because of this time loss...?”

Scully smiled a very small smile and looked utterly skeptic.

Mulder shot ger a quick glanze. ”You know, Agent Scully, I know this must seem extraordinary surprising to you, but that was actually my very first thought. The possibility of this girl being something alien related was was got my attention with this case in the first place. I thought of that. But when I looked into the matter of time travelling and turning back time I realized that this wasn't the case with this Burrow girl. In the file, it is reported that she actually stole time from people, and the reports also asserts that Lisa herself says that she was 'collecting time'. For what purpose is still unknown. 

”You know, Mulder, if affecting time was even possible, it can't just go away. It stays in this universe, it can only be changed. And this is all highly hypothetical. That's actually exactly was Einstein is processing in his theories on the matter. His conclusions are, to put it simple, that time cannot be stolen or replaced, only changed. It's like The Law of Energy: time cannot dissappear, it can only be moved or modifyed into different states. And I still can't see why we have to go to Clarksdale for this? It seems to me that it is more likely that this is an homicide, not an X-file. The original Lisa Burrow case was closed...-”

Scully flipped through the file. ”... in 1985.” 

”Yeah, but I havn't told the whole back story yet. As I said, Lisa Burrow is the fifth , or first, if you wanna put it that way, supposed victim that hasn't been found yet. A couple of weeks ago, after Lisa had been out for one too many hours, her girlfriend got worried and contacted the bureau. There are strong indications that Lisa is the serial killers first victim, but the body hasn't been found yet.”

”What about the other victims?”

”Here.” Mulder dugged through the case file and found some pictures. ”Five persons, All of them gone missing after Lisa, all of their bodies have been found. Cause of death is suffocation, but there arn't any strangle marks on their necks, neither do their throats show any signs of have being stuffed with something or interfered with in any other way. ”

Scully frowned.

”But still, there are no signs of something like time loss. It is probably something toxic, there are several powerful drugs that can cause suffocating from the brain simply shutting down. Has there been a tox screen run?”

”No, but I know exactly the right person for that job.”

”Yeah? And who is that?”

”The very lovely and very talented Dr. Dana Scully.”

”But, Mulder, I don't really believe that...”

Mulder shut her up by giving her his most endearing, crooked smile, yanked his coat of the rack and flinging out his arm against the door:

"You know, Scully, they say that believing is sexy."


End file.
